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State of the Game: December 2012
State of the Game: December 2012 Greetings community! As we adventure into the final month of 2012, we look excitedly to the horizon of 2013. We’re very excited about a new feature we’re calling the “Traveling Merchant”. This feature will appear on the home page and will replace the current scroll images that appear to the left of the Weekly Offer. The Traveling Merchant will rotate different sales for a limited amount of time, allowing us to provide more sales more often throughout the week without having to bring the game down to do so. A timer will appear on the Traveling Merchant that will alert players as to how long an item will be on sale for, similarly to the way Saturday Night Clash or our Draft Events work. We’re going to keep the Weekly Offer in place and still update it, but you can expect the Traveling Merchant to have plenty of exciting things to peruse! Today I’m very excited to talk about a planned revamp of the Zone/Questing system. 'Grid Versus Freeform' The first major change we’re going to implement is converting our maps to work off a grid based system instead of a freeform system. Please note that the squares are for our design purposes only. As a player you wouldn’t visually see these squares but this helps provide some perspective on the application. 'Bigger Can Be Better' The first noticeable difference with this new system will be the removal of the current map size constraints. As it stands right now all maps are the exact same size, but with our new system we’ll be able to expand maps well beyond the current size you’re used to. We will be able to accomplish this by allowing the map to scroll as your character moves. This gives us the freedom to create larger, richer Zones with plenty of things to explore. Including hard-to-find secret areas! 'Improved Performance' Another enhancement that comes with this revamp will be improved performance. Maps should load faster and run much smoother. 'Tighter Nodes' By switching to a grid system we’re also going to be able to ensure that nodes we don’t want to be passed absolutely cannot be. Currently there are several methods that players employ to sneak around certain areas, this is something we’ve previously handled by increasing the radius on a node, but with this new system we’ll be able to adjust this differently without requiring us to have nodes with a base triple or quadruple the size of the node avatar. We still intend to go back and adjust older Zones to make them easier to get through, and this is the first step in making that happen. 'Retroactive' These changes will be retroactive. Meaning it will impact every single Zone, Clash has ever released, which will significantly improve the performance of these Zones. 'Fog of War' One disadvantage to introducing this new system, is that we will need to reset every players’ fog of war. This means if you’ve explored a Zone you’ll have to re-explore it, as your currently explored fog will be removed. 'Improved Pathing' With this new system, the player map avatar will also become much smarter as you’re clicking around the map. The player map avatar will choose a much better course (in most cases) to reach your desired destination. There are other goodies we’re going to try to sneak in with this new system but we’re currently still in the early testing stages of those particular goodies. So for now, we’ll leave it as a mystery! With December now upon us, we’re looking very closely at the various features we’re going to squeeze in before 2012 bids us a final farewell. We’ve received quite a few questions regarding Mega Brawls and the next Clash set so let me help provide some clarity to the situation. 'Next Clash Set?' The next Clash set and Zone 12 will be coming in December. The Zone will feature our new Zone technology (grid system) but will likely not be much larger (if any) than current Zones. With the new set will also come new Draft and Colosseum rewards. Meaning current Draft cards purchased using Eldritch Tokens will now be converted to cost Relic Tokens instead. A similar system will be adopted for Colosseum as well. This does mean that Among the Dead cards will be rotated out entirely and replaced with the first Preview of the new set. It is not our plan to permanently remove cards from the game, so you can expect Among the Dead cards to return in some fashion in the future. 'Mega Brawl' There will be a Mega Brawl in December, but it will not fall on Christmas. We generally try to avoid having a Mega Brawl fall on a holiday and will try to continue that trend going forward. We’ve talked a lot— in past State of the Game posts—about improvements to various parts of Clans, while we have a lot of great ideas we’re very excited to introduce, we will be unable to implement any of these changes in December. Here’s a few things we’re looking into to improve the overall experience for Clans. 'Chat System' We’re currently looking into ways to improve in-clan chat functionality. We feel pretty good about the chat system found on the clan page, but once you’ve left that screen it feels difficult to communicate with your clan. We have several improvements in mind for this and look forward to their introduction. 'Clan vs Clan' This is still very much on the table, but it will require major tech involvement to implement. We’re still very excited for its introduction and we will be sure to keep you posted as we continue to make progress on this feature. 'More Reasons' While Clan vs Clan is a major improvement for Clans, we have quite a few other ideas we’re working towards as well. Improvements to Clan Brawls, clan rewards and other exclusive clan content are all things we’re discussing. We’d like to find ways to improve the quality of certain cards and you can expect to see more about this in the near future. That’s all I have for today folks, thanks so much for reading and as always… Stay Beautiful, Clash Community! Category:State of the Game